Online monitoring of furnace exit gas temperature in power plants

Highlights: • An approach to online monitor the furnace exit gas temperature (FEGT) through acoustic pyrometry was provided. • Two key problems of the acoustic pyrometry technique, which were acoustic signal and time delay estimation, were solved. • The online monitoring technology was applied to a domestic 300-MW coal-fired boiler. -- Abstract: Furnace exit gas temperature (FEGT) is an important physical parameter of energy conservation and environmental protection in a coal-fired boiler furnace; however, to date, there is no effective method for monitoring it continuously online. The recently developed acoustic pyrometry is a comparatively advanced method of temperature measurement which possesses the essential characteristics of traditional temperature measurement approaches. We experimentally implemented online FEGT monitoring using acoustic pyrometry, and we could successfully replace the flue gas temperature probes successfully. Two key problems of the acoustic pyrometry technique, i.e. the acoustic signal and time delay estimation, were solved. We adopted the linear sweeping frequency signal as a sound source signal; its sweeping frequency ranged from 500 to 4000 Hz and the sweeping cycle was 0.1 s. We used a generalized cross-correlation technique with PHAT (Phase Transformation) and ML (Maximum Likelihood) as the time delay estimation method when the boiler was in different states. The actual operation of the monitor indicated that the acoustic pyrometry system was accurate and reliable.